Irving's response

5.243Irving did not accept that Judge Biddle's note was referring merely to the passage which I summarised above. He asserted in his closing submission that, when cross-examining her, defence counsel had suggested that she had not even been in Auschwitz. This was not a proposition which Irving put to Evans in cross-examination (and he directed no questions on this topic to van Pelt). Irving argued that Mme Vaillant-Couturier had made some absurd claims in her testimony (for example that there was a man-beating machine at the camp). Irving persisted in his claim that, from what he had read of the Judge's private papers on the testimony given by the various witnesses, he was able to assert that Judge Biddle was making a general comment on her evidence. Irving did not produce whatever papers he was basing this claim upon.

5.244In his evidence he asserted that Judge Biddle "became so fed up with this woman's testimony that he can finally stand it no longer and he dictates in parenthesis into his report - he says 'this I doubt'". But he did agree that what he had said at the launch of the Leuchter report was a "gloss" on the Judge's comment. He excused it by saying, incorrectly, that it was years since he had read the judge's notes. By way of explanation for the fact that he had quoted the Judge as saying 'All this I doubt" when he spoke in Toronto, Irving claimed, firstly, that he added the word 'all' to make it more literate for his audience and later that the Judge had altered the words "This I doubt" to "All this I doubt". He produced no evidence for the latter claim.